


System Reboot

by RurouniHime



Series: Mailbox Full [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fix-It, GROUP HUG COME ON EVERYBODY, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reconciliation, Steve Needs a Hug, Team Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 17:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11109069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: He can never have both his worlds. Tony, or Bucky. Always apart. He wishes he’d never known anything different.





	System Reboot

**Author's Note:**

> CHADWICKBOSEMAN
> 
> Okay, I don't think I can wait a year for the movie.

He landed the plane somehow: when he next opens his eyes, he’s still alive.

The room is white. It’s noisy, but not… not in here. He squints around. No window. Scratch that, small window embedded in the door. People moving by outside. There’s an IV in his arm, and a slowly dripping bag to his right. He blinks three times before he reads _Saline._ English. Above it, Wakandan. There’s machinery, but it’s all turned off and pushed against the walls. There’s a chair, also. Empty. 

More people pass by the door. Steve pulls himself up and sits on the edge of the… gurney. Hospital. “Okay.” He works the needle out of the crook of his elbow, claps a hand over the hole until it seals itself, and stands. He feels good. Alert. He gets a better look at the IV pole and finds a second, empty bag. Some kind of medication, but he wasn’t hooked in. He’s wearing a plain t-shirt, scrub pants. He checks the small closet embedded in the wall but can’t find the clothes he remembers wearing when he—

When he flew back. Steve hisses through his teeth and lunges for the door.

He exits the room without issue. Not locked in. Definitely a hospital though, and he definitely made it to Wakanda. Personnel move quickly up and down the hall, and not all of them are doctors and nurses: a good portion of them are armed.

He recognizes Ayo a few doors down, in a tense discussion with two members of the Dora Milaje. She sees him, too, watches him with narrow eyes as he maneuvers around the other people. But she doesn’t try to stop him. No one does. Not that he was ever a prisoner here, but he still can’t place himself in the timeline. How long has he been in that room? If they actually needed those dormant machines, then this could be the end result of days upon days. What kind of shape did he come back in, anyway?

Finally he stops someone official, who directs him down the hall to a small room. The bustle of the place has him doubtful, but he finds T’Challa inside as promised. The king stands before the large window, looking out and down. For the first time Steve has context: they are high, almost as high as the royal residence, and overlooking the same massive valley, but from the other side. Mist hangs between, but a glint from the residence windows beams briefly across as the clouds above bare the sun.

“Captain,” T’Challa says as he turns. “I am glad to see you up and moving again. You have been here for six days.”

The detail is very much appreciated. Obviously T’Challa knew he’d be desperate to know. 

T’Challa smiles, looking him up and down. “Clearly you are feeling better now.”

“I saw Ayo. Something happen?”

“She is concerned,” T’Challa says, his eyebrows high, vaguely amused.

“About what?”

“We had an issue with the stasis chambers. One of the power cells malfunctioned. We had to take the entire system offline. Your friend is no longer asleep.”

Steve blinks. “Buck’s up?”

“We could not risk keeping him in stasis without full power. He was checked by our doctors and he is well.”

A warmth blooms in Steve’s chest, unencumbered for once by the constant threat to life and limb. He hasn’t felt the pure emotion since he was a kid. “Where is he?”

T’Challa sighs. “That is what concerns her.”

A hundred possibilities careen through Steve’s mind: Buck’s gone missing, gone feral, hurt someone, _killed_ someone. But T’Challa is too calm for that last one. Steve takes a deep breath, prepares to go out on search. “How long has he been missing?”

T’Challa’s eyebrows shoot up again. “He is not missing.”

“Then he’s confused? What?”

“No, no,” T’Challa says, shaking his head. He places a hand on Steve’s arm. “Slow down, Steve. He awoke perfectly lucid. Actually, the first thing he asked was to see you. He sat vigil at your bedside for a time.”

“Oh.” That’s… that’s good. For the thousandth time since he found out Bucky was alive, Steve lets himself hope. “Where is he now?”

“That is a little more complicated. You see, he woke only to find you comatose. You had minimal brain function for five of those days.”

“Five days?” Surely not that long. The serum should have healed him faster. “How—”

“Our doctors think it was a combination of your injuries and the infection that had set in. You were battling tetanus. I know you were not sleeping before you left, which certainly did not help.”

The weight of the mind, heavier sometimes than the weight of the world. Steve exhales, settling his hands on his hips and looking at the floor. “Okay. So, Bucky’s—”

“Not missing,” T’Challa affirms. “But also not here. Not in Wakanda. He left of his own free will,” T’Challa hurries on, voice rising. He steps into Steve’s path to stop him. Steve hadn’t even realized he’d moved. “Steve, your friend has gone back to the United States.”

There’s a roaring in Steve’s ears. “What?”

T’Challa takes his arms, and gives him a gentle, grounding shake. “I need you to understand why. He cares for you a great deal. I knew this before, but to actually see it…” He studies Steve’s face and nods. “Now I understand why you go to such great lengths for him. And he for you. To his mind, you were in that coma because of him.”

“He didn’t do anything.” All his fights with Bucky crowd his brain: rib-cracking kicks and bone-splintering punches, all the times they have beat each other to a pulp since Bucky came back. 

“Nonetheless, he feels responsible. He said to me, ‘If not for me, he’d never have fought his friend.’”

“Tony,” Steve breathes. “Oh, god, he went back to Tony? And you helped him?”

“What is between them was in place long before you and Stark came into each other’s lives. Your friend wishes to bring it to a resolution.”

“They’ll kill each other,” Steve says, helpless.

T’Challa looks him right in the eye. “Are you certain that is what will happen?”

He isn’t. He isn’t certain of anything. He can’t make the right words form, to explain the extent of his terror. Every thought of Bucky is drenched in the need to protect, and Tony...

When he thinks of Tony, everything dissolves into a churning red mess. “I have to go.”

T’Challa doesn’t move. “You are a wanted man in the United States. Even the protection Stark afforded the rest of your friends does not extend to you, Steve.”

“You got me in once.”

“And I will do it again, if that’s really what you want.” He frowns. It’s not a frown of disagreement, but of worry. His hand remains on Steve’s arm. “I do not know if this is wise. But neither do I think it wise to let your friend remain in danger.”

“From Tony.” Steve grimaces.

“From himself,” T’Challa corrects, soft. “He is a long way from well. The only reason I let him go at all is because this may be an essential part of his cure. For true healing, the body is only half the battle. Comfort of the mind can make or break a person.”

“Then this might as well be a suicide mission,” Steve grits out, anger rising when he sees the look on T’Challa’s face. “And you knew that, too!”

“He certainly believes it to be,” T’Challa acknowledges, “but he is not looking to die. He is looking to pay. I’m not convinced Stark will collect.”

How could he not? Bucky killed his… his… Steve scrubs at his eyes with both hands. Fuck, he can’t even think it. How’s that for cowardice? “I can’t stay here and wait, I can’t—” He hasn’t hyperventilated in decades, but these past months feel like one long panic attack, heart speeding, lungs working overtime, thoughts somehow frozen in place and yet never at rest. Seeing Tony had quenched it, a deluge of relief so potent Steve could have cried, but then that had been ripped away and everything that was re-blooming burned dry as the desert again. Only he’s still holding the withered fronds in his hands, trying to squeeze life back into them.

He can never have both his worlds. Tony, or Bucky. Always apart. He wishes he’d never known anything different.

“I know.” T’Challa steadies him again. “And I will take you myself.”

Something tries to rear its head. “No,” Steve mutters, “I can’t bring you into this. You need to keep your diplomatic immunity, you’re needed here—”

“I am _needed_ where my friends are.” T’Challa shakes him again, just a little twitch that grounds him back to earth. Steve hears him sigh. “And you are my friend, Steve.”

**

The compound is still in pieces. Steve’s body aches with remembered strain as they jog pass the mess that was the main building. No one has cleared that rubble yet. Giant concrete pillars and iron beams tip against crumbling slabs of floor and lie over each other in a tumble. Other areas have seen some work: the ancillary building’s windows have all been replaced and though the façade is still streaked with soot, security systems bristle all around the main entrance. Steve is surprised long enough to beep green through the door—thumbprint, eye-scan—and then he forgets; he’s past it, looking ceiling-ward and calling for FRIDAY. T’Challa comes through behind, eyeing the considerable damage in sober silence.

FRIDAY sends them below ground without a hint of dissent. Here the damage is minor, reinforced gray emergency bunker walls that have been turned into temporary living quarters, labs, and workshops without windows. Steve barely sees any of it; his footsteps quicken the closer he gets, the air growing heavier and heavier around his ears. 

He hasn’t thought about what comes after. There’s only here. Now. This breath and then the next. Tony’s here. Bucky, too. Both in the workshop at the very end of the hall. It used to be a cavernous storage space, filled with equipment Tony had worked on once and set aside in favor of more pressing pursuits. He reaches it, almost skids past it, nearly wrenching the handle from the door as he hauls it open.

“Steve,” T’Challa warns, but Steve’s eyes are already locked, fixed.

Buck’s mechanical arm is off. Gone, torn free at the shoulder and slung across a work table like a forgotten carcass.

“No,” he croaks, and they both look up, Bucky hooked to a cruel metal chair in the center of the room, Tony brandishing a sparking welder directly over his chest. Steve can’t make sense of it, just the ugliness, the malignance of something that caused so much pain. Bucky, used, now used again by Tony? He moves on instinct, snatches one of the heavy pipes leaning against the wall to his right and wheels back.

“Steve, _wait.”_ Bucky lurches to his feet with his good hand extended. Steve stumbles: There are no restraints around Bucky’s wrist, at his ankles. He’s standing on his own, two feet in front of Tony, and in Steve’s way. His eyes are dark and clear.

Pleading.

Tony, welder still in hand, looks Steve up and down once. “You do have a low opinion of me,” is all he says. Steve can’t define his tone. He _can_ feel the pain it spears into his chest.

One second his legs are there; the next, they vanish. Steve hits the ground hard, white fire to his knees. Oh, there they are. He collapses onto one hand, and the pipe rolls away across the floor. In an instant, Bucky is at his side, kneeling over him. 

“It’s okay.” Funny hearing Bucky say that to him. It’s like the world has flipped. Bucky’s flesh and blood hand travels up and down Steve’s back. “He’s fixing my arm. Making it better. Stevie. Breathe.”

He’s not having an attack. But he breathes, just like he did when he was small and slight, when he and Buck had to remind his lungs to behave as lungs, when the worst of their lives was knowing Steve’s mother was dying slowly, watching that day in the future creep closer and closer. Now Steve has killed. Now Bucky has committed terrible atrocities. They have both surrendered each other unto death, and now they are together again, but they’re about as far away from the boys they were as the moon and the sun.

Bucky continues to murmur in his ear. Steve doesn’t retain any of it but the soothing rumble of his voice. He nods all the same, and finally starts hearing what Bucky’s saying. “…couldn’t stay there. I put you there. I knew it wasn’t going to fix things, but for the first time, it was something I could actually do something about. You know I had to try.”

Doesn’t Buck know that if it had come to blows, it would have ruined Steve? Whether Bucky killed Tony or Tony killed Bucky, there was a cliff to fall over, one he’d never climb back up. He still doesn’t know which would be worse. Logic says it should be Bucky: his brother, his oldest friend, his blood. But there’s nothing logical about Tony, and the thought of that hole, that raw, gaping space... _Bad for the world,_ his mind tries, _this world needs Tony Stark in it._ He doesn’t believe it. He grips Bucky’s hand and silently wills him to stop talking. 

Eventually, the pounding in his ears fades and he lifts his head. T’Challa still stands in the doorway, and Tony… Tony leans against the work table, arms crossed over his chest, staring at them inscrutably. Tony’s in ratty jeans, rips ribbing down one thigh like a faded washboard, and a black tee with a logo so worn away it’s a mere echo. His hair is snarled, but his beard is kempt, sheer edges and clean angles. Compared to Steve’s internal disarray, it’s painfully unfair. 

Hurts in his chest. 

“Alright?” Bucky asks. Steve nods. He squeezes Bucky’s fingers to further reassure.

“Perhaps,” T’Challa says, somehow not intruding in the slightest, “it would be best to allow them some space. If, of course, it doesn’t interrupt anything in your repairs?” 

Buck looks back over his shoulder.

“We can stop,” Tony says. No inflection, as though Bucky’s metal monstrosity isn’t lying there six inches from the man he once tried to kill with it. 

Still, Bucky waits, searching Steve’s face. “You okay with that? If you aren’t, I won’t leave.” _I won’t leave you again_ goes unspoken. Still such guilt.

“It’s fine.” Fake it till you make it. Steve gulps it down and it becomes a little less of a lie. “The two of us should talk.” His eyes flick to Tony, almost. He can’t quite go there. But it’s enough to convey the message. Bucky helps him to his feet—the embarrassment sweeps in then, the awkwardness of knowing he’s being seen like this again—and lets him go with a final squeeze. Still, T’Challa has to guide Bucky out: he keeps looking back. Steve can’t tell if he’s worried they’ll kill each other or worried they won’t. 

Tony is the one to break the silence left in their wake. “Come here to stop a war?”

Steve exhales. “It’s all I do.”

Tony hums, noncommittal. He fiddles with a tool on the table next to him. “Some wars need to be stopped.”

And some go on and on. Steve feels sick. He watches Tony move from the tool to Bucky’s metal arm, running his fingers up the plated length of it. The touch is not quite indifferent, not quite fascinated. 

“He walked right in here. Right in through the door.”

Steve’s throat is too dry to swallow. “And what did you do?”

“It’s interesting,” Tony says, to the arm and not to Steve. “Like a nubile rhino.”

Tony didn’t just now take off the metal arm. He kept it. He took it with him from the bunker in Siberia, after Steve left. Somehow the knowledge is more frightening than what Steve thought he’d walked in on. “Like a trophy,” he forces out.

The silence gets heavier. Steve can’t breathe. Can’t truly regret. 

Then Tony shrugs. “I can’t exactly take the arm that killed my mom. Guess I’ll have to settle for already having ripped off the other one.”

“And does that settle it?”

Tony’s expression shivers. It’s nothing good. “Why don’t you ask your friend if it does?”

Steve opens his mouth and closes it, and Tony’s façade finally cracks, into something worse: it’s the farthest from humor Steve has ever seen in a smile. “Wait, I’ll tell you. It doesn’t. He came here fully expecting me to kill him. To pay his dues. But you know what? He showed up and I realized, I don’t want to kill him. I haven’t for a long time. And yet.” Tony spreads his arms a little and waits.

Steve knows all too well what for. “And yet nothing’s changed.”

Tony pops his lips. “Bingo. You know why that is?”

He does. It’s always been the one accusation he could never refute. His only defense is so poor, he cringes when he thinks about it: at the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. The look on Tony’s face when he found out still cuts into Steve, a freshly opened wound. He can’t unsee it. Looking at Tony’s face know, it’s still there.

“I hated him. Of course I did. But you know, you were right.” Tony smirks and shakes his head. “You’re always right. He was just the tool that took the lives. He never made that decision.” He points at Steve. “You did. _You_ decided what I needed to know. _You_ hid it from me. You lied to my face. It’s the one thing I can’t work out of my system.”

“I can’t be sorrier than I already am,” Steve whispers, suddenly so tired. Defeated. “Than I have been, ever since you... found out.” It’s horrible, trying to encompass what happened to them in those two banal words. But this feels even worse.

If, with all he’s capable of and every understanding of how he went wrong, he can’t fix _this,_ then the two of them, they’re done.

“I don’t know how to apologize anymore. Please.” Can’t even bring himself to say Tony’s name, or look at him. Funnily, that’s all he wants to do anymore. If he doesn’t do it now, he’ll never be allowed again. “Don’t rake me over the coals again.”

The silence after is awful.

“I don’t want to do that either,” Tony finally whispers back, and Steve looks up. Tony’s weariness is more like an illness, a virulent malady that swept over him while Steve’s eyes were down. The change is shocking.

“Thank you.” Trite, but necessary. Steve can breathe again.

“I don’t want to fight you anymore,” Tony says. His hand twitches and stills. Steve can see the effort he’s made to keep from... what? His eyes are suspiciously bright. “I _never_ wanted to fight you.”

In a way, fighting Tony is all Steve’s ever wanted to do. Because fighting Tony is like breathing in time with him, the inferno that is his incredible mind finally turned completely in Steve’s direction, eating up the ground beneath his feet, their hearts and their blood pounding out the same inexorable rhythm of violence, their strength focused into the same reverberating space. Side by side, there’s nothing but difference—years, generations, two parallel experiences forever complementing but never destined to meet—but when their spines are out, contrarily, Steve doesn’t feel that vast space between them at all anymore. 

All he really feels is _Tony._

And he was wrong, and a buried part of him is damn well screaming it at the top of its lungs: fighting Tony is the last thing Steve wants to do. 

“So where does that leave us?” It’s hard to talk. The lump in his throat is as big as the universe.

Tony’s whole body trembles. For a long time, he doesn’t answer. “I don’t know,” he finally gets out, all in a rush. He sways forward. “Rogers…”

“Don’t.” Not Rogers. Not that. That was the beginning, before Steve knew this man. _Stark_ is just a sound; it’s Howard, and Howard is dead. It’s not Tony. He summons his voice again. “Steve.”

The light in Tony’s eyes is pained. “‘Steve’?”

“It’s a start.” _Please finish it with me._

Another silence. Tony clears his throat. “I’d shake your hand, but…” He slides his hands into his pockets. “Yeah.”

“Thank you,” Steve whispers again. “For helping him.” He gestures at the bodiless metal arm, its red star scratched and dull, its fingers clenched as though it froze in the middle of its death.

Tony huffs. “You know, it’s a machine. I mess with machines.”

“Even when they try to kill you.”

Tony looks at him, sharp. “Especially when they try to kill me.”

 _I wish I hadn’t tried._ But had he really? Would he have been able to land that blow? Steve can’t remember what he thought in that moment anymore. He tells himself the stubborn truth: that he knew where he was going, the arc reactor was the goal and Tony’s life was never in danger. 

But he keeps seeing Tony’s face.

“I don’t know what I meant to do.” It slithers out of him; he can’t stop it. A second later, he’s glad it’s out, even if it cuts. He rubs his face. “I don’t know what I meant to do anymore.”

“I don’t know what you meant to do either.” Tony’s trying to believe it, Steve can see the fight. Tony suddenly shakes himself, a full body twitch that pops him up away from the table. “But I know what I meant to do.”

Already Steve’s shaking his head. “That’s not—”

“Yeah, sure,” Tony cuts him off, turning away. “Tell yourself what you need to. I know what I did.”

“You didn’t kill him.” He watches as Tony trembles, leaning now with both arms on the worktop. Facing the table. Not facing him. “And you didn’t kill me. That’s the truth.”

“I would have, though.”

“No.” Strange how he’s so sure about Tony but so unsure about himself. He should know himself better. Except he’s scared of himself now.

The realization creeps: He’s not scared of Tony. He’s scared _for_ Tony, for what might happen to him should their separation be allowed to continue. A hundred enemies. A hundred beings trying to hurt them in any way they can. And it would hurt Steve, if they came after Tony. Part of him feels possessive about causing Tony pain, the other part just furious at anyone who would dare try. “I don’t believe that.”

Tony just shrugs.

“Look at me.” Abruptly he’s the one in control. If he thinks about it too much, he’ll scare himself into silence. Slowly Tony turns, giving up the table and coming further into the room. They’re close, but there are all kinds of distances. Steve feels about four of them. 

He makes do, cuts one out of the picture and moves closer. Tony lets him. His hands are in his pockets again, casual, his chin lifted. Tony’s natural defense: _If I don’t care, it doesn’t matter that you do._

Well, Steve cares. He aches with how much. 

He reaches, on a thud of his heart, a surge into his bloodstream. He draws back before he touches Tony’s face. He doesn’t have the right. But Tony’s eyes fix upon his hand, watch it hover, follow it down to his side as though tethered. Steve’s reminded of the way Tony watched that horrific scene play out on the old monitor screen. Incapable of looking away.

Funny; after the first minute, the only thing Steve could bear to look at was Tony’s face. See his friend, in the dwindling seconds while that friend was still there. He’s looking at Tony again now. He can’t stop.

“If you don’t want me here.” It takes all he has to commit. “Say it. I’ll go.”

Tony just covers his mouth with his hand and shakes his head.

Steve sighs. “Tony—”

“If that was what I wanted, I’d tell you!” He scowls at Steve, breathing hard. “Damn it, Steve, you told me I don’t talk, so I’m talking. When I stop talking, it’s because I don’t have anything to say!”

He can’t hope, not again. “And that means?”

“I don’t _not_ want you here, alright? Of course I don’t not want you here, you’re part of the—” He cuts himself off, but Steve hears it ringing. What team? Even with Clint back, with Wanda and Sam ghosting somewhere around this place, there are still rips and tears, and Steve doesn’t know where to begin mending them. 

Then Tony says, “This is your fucking home, it was before it was ever mine,” and Steve _cannot_ let that one go by.

“This is yours,” he hisses. “I told you this was yours, were you even listening? You made this place and this team! I might have led it but it was your blood and sweat, your money, your dedication. I could never have given this to them. You made us what we were and I—” _broke it, I shattered it, for a dead man I was sure I could save and who cares if I was right because what it cost to do it was too fucking high—_

“Yeah, that’s why you all left.” Tony sounds raw, injured beyond belief, and Steve doesn’t think, he just drags him in.

Tony’s hair smells like oil, like metal shavings. Steve presses his face into it, wraps Tony up in his arms, and refuses to think. They breathe out of time, a disjointed heartbeat. Tony’s heat pushes against Steve’s body; his knees press into Steve’s. Steve can feel every shudder and shake, and then, the faintest of phantoms: two hands touching down over his ribs.

 _I won’t hurt you again,_ he wants to say, _I can’t possibly._ But he knows it’s a lie. Part of this is the way they hurt each other, the way they _can_ hurt each other. It’s not healthy. It’s the last thing he ever thought he’d have, ever wanted with someone else. But without it, they wouldn’t be them. He kisses Tony’s hair, not caring what it gives away. Tony’s hands tighten at his sides, sliding around him into something very like a vise. Tony holds onto him like he’s terrified of letting go. Steve feels the heat of breath, and then the pressure of Tony’s mouth in the crook of his throat. 

Not a kiss. It’s what it’s not that keeps the panic at bay. But Tony presses his mouth to Steve’s neck and holds on, and breathes like he’s run miles, and squeezes Steve like he might crush him. Steve imagines it’s Tony’s heartbeat pounding away in his ears. 

“Stay,” Tony says at last, muffling into his skin. “God. _Please_ stay.”

Steve does.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> And there you have it. Kind of slash? I don't know. You know they're always getting it on in my brain. I'm hardly unbiased here. Let's just go with canon-compliant BECAUSE IT IS, YOU CAN'T MAKE ME SAY IT'S NOT.
> 
> Thank you so much to coffeejunkii for the wonderful beta read and commentary!


End file.
